CHANDIGARH: Capt Chanan Singh Sidhu who has quit the Akali Dal (M)asked Mr Simranjit Singh Mann to retire from politics because he was not fit for it.
Addressing a press conference here Capt Sidhu said there was no place in the party for selfless and sincere workers. Only sycophants could survive. In fact he asked Mr Mann to rename his party as “police and truck drivers Akali Dal”.
Capt Sidhu said his resignation letter had been “forged” but he did not mind it because he had already decided to quit as he did not want to be an active party to the “decimation” of the Akali Dal at Mr Mann’s hands.” He released a three-page letter addressed to Mr Mann in which Capt Sidhu leveled a series of charges against Mr Mann and listed his acts of omission and commission which had made the Sikhs a laughing stock of the country.
Today the party lies in shambles. The entire Sikh community is divided into many warring camps. All your colleagues and organizations including the militants who prepared the ground for your unprecedented victory have turned your bitterest critics. Your weak and confused leadership has failed to highlight the issues troubling Punjab”. Capt Sidhu said when Mr Mann was in jail they organized the party in very difficult and challenging circumstances. That was a turbulent period. “The odds that we faced in building the party are perhaps unknown to you. We bore the brunt of opposition from traditional Akalis and the powers that beat the center. We succeeded in building the party from scratch. In a humble way l also contributed to the movement. But it is obvious that you have neither understood nor appreciated the contribution we made. When you came out of jail you interpreted the massive victory as a personal mandate for you. Ego fuelled by your sycophants made you believe that Sikhs were Mann and Mann was Sikhs to the exclusion of all others.
The fact was that thousands of martyrs to the cause others imprisoned and still languishing in jails within and outside Punjab militant organizations human rights activists intelligentsia friends of Sikhs and Punjab sections of the peasantry and urban Sikhs all contributed to the building of the movement. “But your ridiculous statement and ineffective and confused leadership have led you to preside over the party’s disintegration. Your dictatorial behavior and self-glorification are the major cause for this unfortunate reversal. Dal stands split and segregated. You have sullied the image of the Dal which we built both at the national and international level.
Capt Sidhu pointed out that the AISSF leader Bhai Manjit Singh who was a colleague of Mr Mann had “questioned your mental sanity” and said “you need psychological treatment. But you do not seem to realize it”. He said power unaided by sanity was the headiest wine. “I resigned because it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to work with such a haughty and dictatorial person. Equally embarrassing had become your ridiculous statements like the one which promised stoppage of trains and dismantling of railway lines such statements exercise the public mind and as the chief campaigner of your party had to face the enquiring public” he added.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 21, 1991
